February 27, 2017

I Can't Take Action ...

There's nothing like telling the audience I am speaking at a conference or I am publishing a new booklet to drive increased unsubscribes.

Given that I'm going to spend this entire week talking about the VT/NH event on March 30, you might not like the content ... if it really bothers you, please unsubscribe right now. It's ok, no worries.

Here's a link to the event (click here). Please join us! It costs you next to nothing and the VT/NH do a great job and you won't be swarmed by a 60/40 vendor mix when you walk down the hall. It's you and your peers.

Ok, why am I hosting a business simulation instead of giving a two hour talk about metrics or customer acquisition or merchandise productivity?

Well, Bill runs a conference where you don't have to pay $20,000 to sell a message to the audience and appreciates honest perspectives (even if everybody in the audience is not going to agree) and that is greatly appreciated. So that's a big part of it. It's terribly hard in our modern world to not get trapped by a conference that has "scale" ... you get seduced into bringing an NFL quarterback into the fold or an NBA legend or you host a nighttime event with a popular band from the 1990s ... and you get seduced into vendor nonsense. Yes, you have a large audience and you have money ... but what good is that if you are conference organizer? You have to help people perform better, don't you?

So that's one reason I am running a business simulation - to help you perform better at work.

Here's the other reason I am running a simulation instead of offering 188 slides about metrics or customer acquisition or merchandise productivity. The reason = Action + Accountability.

When you present a couple hundred slides to fifty or three-hundred or fifteen hundred people, you get a lot of feedback. In the past two years, here's the number one comment I received as feedback:

"This is great, but I can't take action because of ...."

"I can't take action."

When you can't take action, you look for metrics and/or facts that will convince somebody else to take action. Now, I could craft a 200 page presentation with the metrics that I recommend you use - but your situation is "local" and my metrics are "global" and so the presentation would end up a failure, because the presentation doesn't address the core issue. The core issue, of course, is "why" you cannot take action.

I've learned that there are three reasons people don't take action.

Leadership wants to "control" things.

People know what to do but are afraid of the consequences of being wrong.

People don't know what to do.

So if I remove Leadership/Control from the equation ... and if I remove the consequence of being wrong ... and if people who don't know what to do get to see what people who know what to do actually do ... then I've removed "why" from the equation. And if the "why" has been removed from the equation, then we should be in a fun situation, a learning situation, where Action + Accountability is rewarded ... and if the participant doesn't perform well it's ok because the participant gets to see the actions that led to a positive outcome.

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Kevin Hillstrom, President, MineThatData

Kevin is President of MineThatData, a consultancy that helps CEOs understand the complex relationship between Customers, Advertising, Products, Brands, and Channels. Kevin supports a diverse set of clients, including internet startups, thirty million dollar catalog merchants, international brands, and billion dollar multichannel retailers. Kevin is frequently quoted in the mainstream media, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Forbes Magazine.

Prior to founding MineThatData, Kevin held various roles at leading multichannel brands, including Vice President of Database Marketing at Nordstrom, Director of Circulation at Eddie Bauer, and Manager of Analytical Services at Lands' End.

You may contact kevin at kevinh@minethatdata.com.

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